There’s more going on at Robotoki, the development studio founded in 2012 by former Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling, than just work on the studio’s first game.

The studio has added an “entertainment division,” which will create videos of various sorts, including original short films and shows that will help build community between Robotoki, players and other developers. This fledgling division within this fledgling studio does not exist to make trailers and other regular marketing or PR materials, Bowling told Game Front.

Instead, the entertainment division will focus on creating content they themselves find interesting, and which allows the viewers to interact with Robotoki in a way that’s not only predicated on buying a new game.

“I think the problem with developers that are just focused on the games that they’re making all the time is the only time you talk to your community is when you need something,” he said. “Just as in real life, that’s a terrible way to build a relationship. I think relationships with your community are very important.”

The morning after Robotoki suffered a break-in attempt that Bowling himself thwarted earlier this month, Game Front paid the office a visit to speak with studio boss. Bowling explained the idea behind the entertainment division and gave a quick studio tour. The Sherman Oaks, Calif., office is an odd space, with the lobby on the ground floor and the staff work areas above it. A room the size of a cozy studio apartment on the third floor is where this “entertainment” magic will happen.

The room itself was mostly empty when Bowling took us up to it — the biggest intruder into that emptiness being a PC set up for video editing against the side wall. Also taking up space were scanners for capturing 3D character models — for example, staff members done up like zombies and then inserted into Human Element — and more standard camera equipment.

Bowling mentioned his time at Infinity Ward as an example of how to form strong relationships with a studio’s player base. For many years, he served as the face of Call of Duty, and in that role he said he and other members of the team at IW made sure to answer questions and just talk and be open with the community. There are certainly some folks out there on both sides of the relationship who aren’t happy taking that approach, but Bowling said he thinks it works.

Robotoki’s entertainment division idea is an outgrowth of that community involvement: It’ll produce content that allows the viewers to get to know the Robotoki folks a little bit better. But, Bowling said, not in a boring way.

“The entertainment division is just creating content that celebrates our industry. I think there’s a lot of cynicism and normalization that has happened about game development. It is very accessible now, so people sort of get it. It’s not exciting,” Bowling said. “This is a chance to celebrate developers who are doing amazing stuff, developers who are breaking the mold, individuals within the industry that we respect, inside of Robotoki and especially outside of Robotoki.

“It doesn’t have to be about marketing and promotion and sales. It’s much more about the process, like ‘How did you do this? What were the hurdles?’ Because that’s interesting.”

Part of what makes that interesting, Believes believes, is the rise of the micro- and no-budget indies. While acknowledging that having a studio with a bunch of people is not the same as huddling up at somebody’s house to work, he said the driving sentiments are similar across that divide. He said Robotoki’s entertainment efforts are about that common motivation.

“I think the problem with developers that are just focused on the games that they’re making all the time is the only time you talk to your community is when you need something.”

“Nowadays there are a lot more people making games in their rooms, who are making games in their basements, who are leaving big studios and teaming up with three guys and making really compelling stuff. I think sharing that knowledge is more valuable than keeping it,” Bowling said. But he said the similarities are more than just in the mind; Some Robotoki employees work on their own sorts of side projects after they finish up work on Robotoki’s open-world zombie dystopia Human Element each day. Making these videos will be another creative outlet for them in addition, perhaps, to being about them.

“We have a lot of artists here, who right now they’re focused on making photorealistic 3D stuff for Human Element, that is all set within the universe of Human Element. No matter how passionate you are about that universe, no matter how excited you are to work on it, if you do it day in and day out, you get burned out,” Bowling said. “That’s why these guys go home and they do 3D modeling and they do texturing and they make characters that are completely outside the universe. Because they need an outlet creatively. Here, it (the entertainment division) allows them to do that.”

Bowling said he’d already been receiving pitches from Robotoki staff, including a proposal for a series of animated shorts — indicating the scope of the new division may be wider than Bowling has made it seem.

There will be a guiding hand in the Robotoki entertainment shingle other than Bowling. The studio has brought in Beau Ryan, formerly of Machinima and current owner of RadNerd, which runs the popular Skylanders BOOMcast for Activision, to take charge of entertainment production. And while they are taking this seriously, Bowling said they are not trying to get rich off these videos.

“We don’t care about view count,” he said, though he later qualified that these videos should pay for themselves. “Our goal is not ‘this is a profit generator.’ It’s ‘this is a sustainer’. The revenue should sustain the content. It does not have to sustain the studio.”

Correction: This article previously stated that the same equipment is used for scanning 3D models and shooting video. The text has been altered to reflect that Robotoki uses unique equipment for each of these actions.

When Robert Bowling ran to stop the man who had just broken through the glass door of Robotoki‘s office Wednesday night, he wasn’t thinking about risks to his personal safety.

“All I was thinking about was that time and money that we’ve put into building the studio from scratch,” the Robotoki studio head told Game Front in an interview Thursday morning. “The sound of security glass breaking, it is extremely loud, and it rains down … so from the top of the stairs, what it sounded like was somebody literally trashing the entire lobby. When you get down there and realize and see all they did was kick through a door, you’re kind of relieved.

“I didn’t really think too much about, you know, consequences or the amount of people in there or whether they were armed. It was really just like, ‘Stop breaking my shit.’”

Bowling thwarted the burglary a little after 7 p.m., when two men used a rock to break the glass door and one climbed through the hole into the lobby of Robotoki’s Los Angeles studio. On seeing Bowling, the intruder turned and left, and Bowling called Los Angeles police.

“It was just me and our lead FX artist (David Schoneveld) chatting about stuff, and that’s when we heard the first rock hit the door,” Bowling said. “We headed for the stairs, and he stopped at the top, and I just kept barreling down.

“That’s the point when I confronted him (the thief who had entered the lobby) and yelled a lot of obscenities. He just about-faced and went right back out the hole he created. I just blocked the door and started calling the cops.”

Lt. Robert Davis of the Los Angeles Police Departmet confirmed that officers responded to the “commercial burglary” at Robotoki, but otherwise had no information on hand about the incident.

Bowling began the work day Thursday by gathering the team to talk about what happened and how the studio can try to prevent something similar from occurring in the future, he said.

“I thought it was important at 10 a.m. this morning, as soon as everybody got in, to hold a security meeting to talk about any concerns people have and steps we’re going to be taking in the future, and I think that helped a lot,” Bowling said.

The most notable move Robotoki will make is to hire an after-hours security guard, Bowling said, who will be posted in the lobby area. He also said that the fact the incident didn’t result in any notable harm to staff or property, as well as the amusing video of him running at the burglars and scaring them off, helped keep studio morale from dipping much.

And while heightening studio security will come with a budget increase, Bowling said the expense — he estimated it would cost the studio more than $10,000 over a year — is absolutely worth it.

“That is exciting and humorous in hindsight, but security for our employees is paramount,” he said. “Security for the production of the game (Human Element) and all this stuff, even though we have redundant backups, anything like someone coming in and trashing our servers is going to delay production of the game.”

Sherman Oaks, the Los Angeles neighborhood in which Robotoki is located, is a statistically high-end area, and Bowling said the break-in isn’t making him worry about the spot on which he planted his studio.

“Crime happens anywhere,” he said. “It really is just desire plus opportunity. I think the one downside we have is our entrance is in an alley, rather than facing Ventura (Boulevard). If we were facing Ventura, it’s probably not an issue at all, because there’s cars going by, people would see stuff.”

Robert Bowling’s new studio, Robotoki, will be the first to make games for the recently Kickstarted, Android-based Ouya console when it (eventually) becomes available.

Robotoki’s first title, Human Element, is getting an episodic prequel on Ouya. That game will fill in some of the backstory of the post-apocalyptic zombie title Robotoki is making for more traditional platforms — namely, PC and next-gen consoles.

Bowling is a big believer in the Ouya, and has even backed it to the tune of $10,000. Meanwhile, Human Element isn’t coming out until 2015, but there have been hints that the Ouya episodes are likely to cycle out sooner than that.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/wil-wheatons-e3-videos-all-in-one-place/feed/9Robotoki’s Human Element is “Gamifying Real Life”http://www.gamefront.com/e3-2012-robotokis-human-element-is-gamifying-real-life/
http://www.gamefront.com/e3-2012-robotokis-human-element-is-gamifying-real-life/#commentsFri, 15 Jun 2012 16:13:58 +0000Ron Whitakerhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=172182NOTE: This is Part 2 of a five part interview series with Wil Wheaton. Check out Game Front’s E3 Channel for more news, previews and Wil Wheaton videos!

In our newest Wil Wheaton interview from E3, Robotoki founder Robert Bowling was explaining just how his new game works. While it’s still a first person adventure when you’re on your PC, it’s doing some really cool stuff when you walk away from the PC that caught our attention. If you’re a fan of immersive experiences, this is one you can take along while you’re out.

This part of the interview starts at 1:45

Robert Bowling: The core console / PC experience is a first-person survival game. It’s a very cinematic, immersive experience. Now, what we’re doing on tablet is very different. This is what I’m most excited about. What we’re doing with Robotoki is we’re looking to desing very platform agnostic experiences.

When I’m at home, sitting down with a controller in my hands, I want to be engaged. I want to be immersed in this universe. But now, say I leave my house in real life. I’m out and about/ I’m in a train, a plane, I’m in a waiting room. I open up my iPad, and I open up Human Element on that. Now we’re pulling in Google Maps API, we’re pulling in FourSquare business API. We’re overlaying the world of Human Element on top of that.

Wil Wheaton: What?!

RB: So now, I’m scavenging all these real world locations for dynamic supplies. So, I know what I’m going to get from a CVS Pharmacy; I know what I’m going to get from here. Think of it in this context, OK?

WW: That’s awesome!

RB: Think of it as this: You’re playing the game at home. You’re playing, you get injured. You’re hurt, you need medical supplies. You either don’t want to risk going out and finding them, or you’ve already tried and can’t find any. But, you know there’s a CVS pharamacy 4 miles up the street. You go there, check in on your iPad, get those supplies, and that feeds into your experience on all the other platforms.

WW: So, you’re gamifying real life…

RB: Exactly!

WW: I can’t decide if that’s the most evil thing in the world, or if that’s like, so unbelieveably cool.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/e3-2012-robotokis-human-element-is-gamifying-real-life/feed/1Robert Bowling on Activision: Creativity Should Win Over Businesshttp://www.gamefront.com/robert-bowling-on-activision-creativity-should-win-over-business/
http://www.gamefront.com/robert-bowling-on-activision-creativity-should-win-over-business/#commentsFri, 15 Jun 2012 16:13:55 +0000Ron Whitakerhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=172188NOTE: This is Part 2 of a five part interview series with Wil Wheaton. Check out Game Front’s E3 Channel for more news, previews and Wil Wheaton videos!

Robert Bowling has been in the news a lot recently, both for founding a new company and for leaving Activision, where he was the face of the biggest game franchise in the world, Call of Duty. While he was chatting with our correspondent Wil Wheaton at E3 last week, he had some interesting things to say about just what he learned during his tenure at Activision.

Wil Wheaton: Your mission statement from Robotoki is what I wish everyone’s mission statement was. About creating an environment that nurtures and fosters creativity. It’s really difficult to read that, and not think, “Well you just left a huge mega-publisher.” It’s hard not to read that and think, “This seems a little reactive.” So, what about that?

Robert Bowling: I worked on Call of Duty for seven years, one of the biggest publishers in the industry. With some of that experience behind me, you learn a lot about what you don’t want. You learn a lot about what works well, like what makes a successful franchise, you learn a lot of great lessons. And part of that is learning “ok, this doesn’t work. This is not how you do it.” I think as an industry as a whole, we have a lot to learn about how we treat creative talent.

At the end of the day, what you learn is we’re in a creative field, just like film and television. Anything that you create, it’s not black and white. It requires emotion, it requires passion, and it requires people to be happy–because if you’re not happy with what you’re doing, it’s going to show in the quality of your work. That’s why with Robotoki, our entire design philosophy is focusing on [the creative team] first, and everything else second. We’re not focused on the project, we’re focused on the team creating the project. If we nail the happy team, you’re going to get a good project.

WW: That almost sounds like the philosophy that drove the original Activision guys to leave Atari in like ’79, or whenever they did that. They were very successful. They were making awesome games that everyone loved, but the corporate culture overwhelmed the creative culture.

RB: Right. There needs to be a difference in that. You can’t let business objectives guide your creative decisions, no matter what. We came out running with Robotoki. We announced, and we’re like, ok. I’m self-funding out of my own pocket the start of this company, so that our foundation isn’t being shaped by those business objectives. We’re not taking someone else’s money to risk setting up this company. We’re doing it on our own, so that we can set the foundation, the way we want to build a company. Now that we’ve done that, we want to find partners who want to come in and be a part of that.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/robert-bowling-on-activision-creativity-should-win-over-business/feed/2Wil Wheaton Interviews Robert Bowlinghttp://www.gamefront.com/e3-2012-wil-wheaton-interviews-robert-bowling/
http://www.gamefront.com/e3-2012-wil-wheaton-interviews-robert-bowling/#commentsFri, 15 Jun 2012 16:13:51 +0000Ron Whitakerhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=172183NOTE: This is Part 2 of a five part interview series with Wil Wheaton. Check out Game Front’s E3 Channel for more news, previews and Wil Wheaton videos!

Last week at E3, we had the extremely awesome Wil Wheaton hosting our video coverage. In addition to hisrecapvideos, Wil also got to sit down and interview some awesome people. Yesterday, it was Todd Howard from Bethesda.

Today, it’s one of the best known ex-community managers in the world, Robert Bowling. After leaving Activision earlier this year, he founded a brand new developer called Robotoki. He’s working on a game called Human Element, and we were lucky enough to entice him to talk to us.

That something new turned out to be him founding his own gaming studio, Robotoki, which all signs point to as being organized around the concept of not treating your employees poorly. Just before E3 2012, Robotoki finally got around to announcing their first project, a zombie survival game they’re calling Human Element. We were lucky enough to get 15 minutes with Robert on the last day of E3, and he talked to us at length about that new game, about how Robotoki actually drew inspiration from Kane & Lynch, and most shockingly, about his love for Nintendo’s next installment in the New Super Mario series.

***

Game Front: Getting right down to it, let’s talk about Human Element. How far into development is it? How long before we’ll be able to see something playable?

Robert Bowling: It’ll be about 2 years before we start showing demos off. We’re very early in the pre-production right now.

Are you still in the concept art stage, how far along are you?

Right now, this is a universe that requires a lot of engineering and a lot of writing. Because it is such an open world game based on scenarios. So right now we’re doing a lot of the writing and getting the tech worked out, because we’re doing something very different with Human Element. It requires a lot of technology to do the platform diagnostic stuff. That’s really where our focus is right now.

Human Element has an interesting gameplay mechanic, either a solo campaign, you and another adult character, or you and a child. My first thought when I heard about the child character is that it sounds like you have the option of making the entire game an escort mission. Is that what you were going for, and could you talk a little about how each of these settings will be differentiated?

Yeah, your ‘identity’, which is what we call each option, whichever you choose really determines the entire scenario of your campaign, and it really determines your difficulty. Because what we’re doing is, we’re not scaling damage, we’re not scaling AI intelligence, we’re not scaling quantity of survivors, or adding other factors to make it more difficult, the only thing that makes it more difficult is your individual scenario. If you’re by yourself, you’ll find it easier. If you’re with another adult it’s slightly harder because you’re splitting supplies, but they’re another adult so they can help you. The hardest is being with a child who requires supplies, but can’t defend themselves.

But we are working very hard, the big challenge is making that not feel like an escort mission the entire time. It’s about allowing that child and that new dynamic to put you in unique scenarios that you normally either wouldn’t come across, or wouldn’t fear as much, as being by yourself, or being with another adult.

Are you planning this as a more linear experience with variety depending on your identity, or is this going to be an open world game?

Open world. There is no point a to point b. What I hate the most is when game developers tell you when the fun is over, when the game has finished. We really want you, as a player, to define your survival, to define what your story is. Your story isn’t determined by a plot that we’re trying to tell, but by how you approach each scenario that you’re presented with dynamically. By the end of that, you’ve told a story that’s dynamic, based on your identity, based on when you came across it. And since it is open world, you come across the scenarios after different situations. You won’t see the same experience that someone else who even uses your same identity sees.

When you talk about scenarios, do you mean there will be branching storylines, is it going to be a narrative-focused game, or more sort of objective-focused game?

I would say neither. This is an ‘experience’ type of game, so we’re putting you in situations that are very open ended, and therefore you’ll have unique experiences. We’re not trying to send you just on a journey, and we’re not just trying to send you on objectives. There will be elements in which you can choose to go to certain tasks that will benefit you, but this is not simply objective or story driven.

Can you tell me how you’re approaching the Zombie genre? Are you looking at zombie games specifically? We’ve seen games like Dead Island, which ended up being a lot of fetch quests, or Dead Rising, which ultimately ended up having infuriating fake difficulty with the way save points worked rather than actual terrors. Can you briefly talk about where you’re coming from approaching the genre? Are there any zombie games, survival horror games that you’re looking at and thinking about avoiding, or finding inspiration in?

The funny thing is, we’re finding a lot of inspiration from non-survival horror. That’s what’s always the most fun, when you can bring elements, little nuggets and mechanics that you find in different genres and bring it in to reshape your expectations of what this genre is. A lot of stuff they did in the multiplayer for Kane & Lynch, for example, that we have found very interesting.

Really? Can you mention what particular aspect of Kane & Lynch?

What I love about the Kane & Lynch multiplayer was that there was this whole dynamic of creating and then breaking alliances. And it wasn’t a game mechanic, it was essentially a by product of the fact that you were robbing a bank with these other people and whoever survived at the end split the money. And therefore, because there was voice communication people were creating alliances and then silently breaking those alliances so they could get out ahead with more money. That kind of mentality and gameplay was very intriguing.

In fact, that defines what the human element is. We’ll naturally try to deceive each other, we’ll naturally try to create a partnership for safety and then destroy that partnership when they no longer need the other person.

So how will a multiplayer component in this game work along with single player?

We will, we define it as… we never say the words ‘single player’ because the campaign experience is impacted by the actions of a lot of other people, but then we will also have a dedicated multiplayer experience. We’re not ready to give the details just yet, but it is meant to be very different from the campaign experience. It’s very much about fast-paced action while the campaign is more about choice.

But you’ll be building in this idea of shifting alliances and backstabbing into both the campaign experience and multiplayer?

Exactly.

Can you tell me about which platforms you’re planning to develop for?

Right now we’re aiming for next gen consoles, PC, and a separate experience for tablet and mobile.

If we can shift gears, let me ask you a bit about this E3. There’s been a mixed response to it, can I ask, given it’s your first time here as an independent developer, what’s your take on this year’s show? And how are you feeling about the state of the industry?

As an industry I’m very excited where we’re going. As an E3 itself, it’s so interesting because there’s a lot of familiar this year. There are a lot of sequels, a lot of iteration. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, you can do that well, but it was interesting to see that lag. And that’s why I think when you have some new IP like Watch Dogs, like The Last of Us, that people are getting behind them so strongly, it’s exciting, refreshing to see.

I think this is definitely the rise of the Indie developer this year. Over the last year we’ve seen a lot of big figureheads from a lot of big studios leave their former positions and go down the indie path. But because of that, we haven’t seen the results of that migration yet. But I think next year’s E3 and the year following, we’re really going to see the rewards of that. I think that’s where the gaming industry is going.

If I can ask, how do you see the place of the indie development world in the next generation of consoles, compared to the previous 2 or three years?

I think there’s going to be a lot of blurred lines and broken down barriers between what is a triple-A title and what is an indie title. A lot of that will come from new distribution technology, new ways for gamers to get games, and a more equal platform of digital distribution that will allow any game to be featured and as accessible as any triple-A game without needing the marketing budget that those guys have, so I’m excited for that. I’m also excited about the new technology that we’re getting at this E3, things we’ll be incorporating into Human Element, technology that will allow designers to think about things differently.

This is refreshing because in the past, you sit down and you’re like ‘ok, I’m making a console experience. I have this control pad, I have the TV, let’s make an experience out of that. But now we’re not limited by that anymore. Our users have mobile phones, they have tablets, they have all these different things that we can now put interfaces on, experiences on that are additive and supplemental to what we’re designing for the TV.

My final question for you is, of all the stuff you’ve seen at this E3, what are your favorite one or two games?

Number one would definitely be Naughty Dog’s The Last Of Us. From just a technical feat standpoint, their animations, dialogue, how the characters react to one another, it’s so well polished, their ability to connect you to characters and tell a story is phenomenal. Nobody does it better than them right now. So The Last Of Us is by far one of my favorite.

Other than that, I would say we just got finished playing New Super Mario Bros. U and I loved it. I loved the multiplayer where 4 people are playing and one person has the WiiU Tablet and they’re creating the blocks for you, how they can either help or hinder your gameplay experience, it was a lot of fun.

I don’t think I expected to hear you lavishing praise on a Mario game when I went into this interview!

(Laughs) It was a lot of fun, honest.

* This post was edited; Robert Bowling spent 7 years with Activision, not 4.